


down on the corner

by akitania (spacehairdresser)



Category: 20世紀少年 | 20th Century Boys (Manga)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Gen or Pre-Femslash, Post-Canon, Post-Post-Post Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 18:09:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17146577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehairdresser/pseuds/akitania
Summary: Kanna is back in Japan, and her luck hasn't run out yet.





	down on the corner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [suitablyskippy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/gifts).



There was a while when Japan was rid of Endous, and it made Kanna a little apologetic about returning. It was hard to shake the feeling that the world would threaten to end again the moment her plane landed. But the ground didn’t give out under its wheels, there was no news of a rising dictatorship when she turned her phone back on, and there were no giant robots on the horizon. There was a message from her aunt asking if it had been a smooth flight, and Kanna wondered if she was letting down some cosmic force when she said yes.

 

So Endou Kanna was back in Japan, and she smiled at the customs officer who squinted at her name, remembering Aunt Yukiji’s horror stories of her time in airport security. That was when it all started, more or less. But Kanna had nothing to declare except herself, no matter how long the agent looked at her passport. Her mother was still in Africa and her uncle was still on a world tour of his own, and her father was still dead, as he had been since 2014. Not an Endou, but still — trouble.

(And her grandmother somewhere up north, having returned earlier. The desert hadn’t agreed with her, she said, which was probably true. Her grandmother didn’t agree with anything, and the feeling seemed mutual.)

 

Her apartment was as she left it, mostly bare. Her belongings were still boxed for transport from hideout to hideout. The artists next door were asleep by the time the bus pulled in, and she reminded herself to say hello in the morning. How was their manga? She hadn’t kept up. 

Kanna spent the entire morning unpacking the boxes from the last safe house, tie-dyed tapestries and a slightly absurd number of posters. Maybe not, she thought, arms full of paisley. It was suddenly embarrassing, for some reason, to imagine her uncle seeing all of this. It wasn’t the kind of shrine you made for a person who turned out to be alive after all. There was a postcard in her mailbox, _Berlin macht spaß!_ If Kenji had raised her, she’d probably have learned to decipher his handwriting, but the Japanese was less comprehensible than the German.

Kanna dropped the tapestry and then picked it up again, folding it to a neat square. Then, without deliberation, she picked up her guitar and dashed to the street, barely remembering to shout hello to Ukijo Ujio.

She didn’t actually know that many songs, and her old standard was hopelessly cliché and not too relevant anymore. It was almost all she’d played back when she’d tried busking, and her aunt always found her and scolded her before she got very far, anyway. So she went with another classic, some CCR. Her fingers were soft, she realized. Had they ever really been callused enough? She wasn’t the musician in the family. Nor was she the genius, for that matter — her mother had asked if she planned to apply to university when she got back to Japan, and her mind had gone blank. Chouno piped in unhelpfully that her grades were exceptional and that there were programs in place now for students who had been unable to finish high school due to the regime changes.

She had thought nostalgically, and did again as she struggled with an out-of-tune D string, of the time when their relationship allowed her to punch him in the face. She could still, she reflected, but he’d been doing his best to be kind in his limp way, so it seemed unfair. He’d brought her uncle back to her, hadn’t he, and made the flight out to her mother with her.

Kanna finally wrestled the string into submission and picked out the first riff. And not quite sure of the lyrics or their pronunciation, she struggled on through one classic, then another, then…

“Oh. It’s you.” 

The first person to stop for her music loomed over her, arms akimbo and eyes widened slightly. Kanna was struck by the urge to say the same thing back, but she didn’t get the chance.

“Sorry, that came out kinda rude. I just thought I might’ve discovered someone, uh, undiscovered. ‘Cuz you know, industry connections. There are a ton of people trying to break in now that the censorship laws are lifted. But anyway…” Koizumi Kyouko — if there were any doubt it was here, it would’ve vanished when she started to speak — flapped a hand dismissively. “You don’t care about that.” She jammed the hand, floating in front of her face, into a pocked, her voice becoming curiously shy even in its enthusiasm. “So. You’re back!”

“Um.” Kanna had frozen in F-minor, and she strummed absently. “Yeah. I just got in last night.”

“Cool. Cool. Well.” Kyouko bounced on her heels. She’d started wearing her hair down. Kanna had always thought she was pretty. “I’m probably bugging you. Have fun with your music.” She stuck out a thumbs up. “You’ve got a really good voice. Call me if you ever want an audition — you have my number, right? — Wait, I’m stupid, obviously you wouldn’t need me to get in with Haru Namio-san. I’ll shut up. Jesus, sorry.”

She was lurching back in her rocking, probably about to turn on her heel and leave, when Kanna opened her mouth and let it move with mechanical idiocy. “You think I have a good voice?”

It was impossible to read the sequence of expressions that flashed across Kyouko’s face; it landed, like a slot machine, somewhere around panic. Then it smoothed over, smiling but maybe somehow aggrieved. “Sure. I mean, you’re impossibly good at everything else, so obviously you’re a great singer.”

“A lot of that was ESP,” Kanna said, modestly.

Kyouko rolled her eyes and pirouetted to a squat, leaning against the wall with Kanna. It was another one of so many empty storefronts, _COMING (BACK) SOON_ , the windows still boarded over. She was actually only pretend-leaning, Kanna noticed, her nice gray jacket a good inch clear of the grime. 

“I used to think you were unbelievably cool,” Kyouko said forlornly. Her perch had to be uncomfortable, balancing on the balls of her heels with her knees to her chest, braced on extended fingers. Kanna was too distracted to be insulted.

“Me?” she asked, feeling stupid again immediately 

“Yeah! You were the best at everything and it seemed like you didn’t have to try! Everyone thinks you’re so important! The first time I talked to you, I forgot how to speak Japanese!”

What would — what would _anyone_ say, to see the Ice Queen blush? “I don’t remember that at all.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” Kyouko said, gloomy at once, winding a strand of hair around her index finger. “It’s not like the entire conversation’s been burned into my brain for the last three and a half years.” She gave up, finally, on the balancing act and slumped against the wall, shoulder to shoulder with Kanna. “Is something going to happen?”

She looked at her. “What?”

Maybe uncomfortable with the eye contact or maybe just expecting an air raid, Kyouko glanced at the sky. “I feel like the whole world gets weird whenever I run into you. I don’t really have time for that anymore. I’ve got an internship, and an international tournament tomorrow—” 

“Good luck!” Kanna exclaimed, eager to cut her off before her train of thought reached a conclusion that made her, for a reason she couldn’t name, suddenly unsettled.

Kyouko, for her part, made another sound of despair. “Screw you. I’d have started throwing matches ages ago so God would stop making me play, but I’m afraid he’d just drop dead. He’s really clinging to that one dream.”

“You shouldn’t give up on something you’re so good at.” 

That didn’t cheer Kyouko up in the slightest. “Whatever. Seriously, let me know if there’s anything I should be looking out for. What are the chances I run into you in this big-ass city one day after you get back from wherever and one day before I’m supposed to fly out to Australia?”

Kanna stared at the pavement, watching the clean shoes that passed by, not stopping for a busker who wasn't bothering to play. "I've always had good luck."

They were both silent for a moment, then Kyouko was giggling half-hysterically as she rose to her feet. "And mine's always been terrible, but I've been trying to get it to turn. Maybe I'm wasting it all on bowling." She brushed herself off with elaborate care. "I should go pack."

"Let's hang out sometime," Kanna said. "When you get back from Australia."

"Sure." Kyouko looked taken aback. "Me?"

"I've never really had friends my own age," she said, unselfconscious. Just people who would die for her if she asked, and do it twice as fast if she didn't. Maybe that was it, just the fact that Kyouko always wanted to run the other way and still had been the only person to try to speak to her in high school.

She was grateful that Kyouko's look wasn't pitying, just one of genuine surprise. "I really thought you were the coolest." She waved, still turned halfway around as she melted into the lunch-hour crowd. "Call me!"

Kanna grinned, feeling suddenly lighter than she could even remember, and traced out a chord progression. More and more people were passing her, some at a clipped pace and some leisurely, a few giving her a smile. A line from Uncle Kenji's song came into her mind unbidden, and she laughed to herself. Maybe it'd be her closing number for the day after all, if she could still remember those show-off riffs at the end. She was already impatient, sh realized, for everyone to be home again.


End file.
